These small displays of destruction, these casual demonstrations of power keep accumulating, each one chipping away at my sense of safety. He’s building a world of tension, an invisible fence around me. And I don’t know if I have the strength—or maybe the courage—to push back.
I glance at the TV, feeling sick. Even the shows I once found mindlessly enjoyable aren’t safe from his judgment. Just mentioning60 Days InandLife After Lockupbrings on a tirade. “I refuse to watch that depressing prison shit,” he snaps, his face scrunched in disgust. “My biggest fear is going to jail or prison. I just can’t do it. It’s too real. It gives me flashbacks.”
Okay, well, those are two more shows I can check off the list. I’m starting to run out of shows that he will allow me to watch without making me regret it. My choices are shrinking, the simple comforts I once enjoyed being removed one by one. Any reality TV, anything too sad, too dramatic, too fluffy, too Margaux chose it.
And then there’s his driving. When he’s calm, he drives with this easy confidence. But when he’s angry, he transforms into this other person entirely, someone who treats the road like his personal territory. He takes his aggression out on the wheel, swerving and weaving, tailgating with terrifying precision, jumping lanes when it’s risky to do so. And I feel like saying anything only makes it worse, makes him more reckless. When I glance over as he’s doing this, he just sets his jaw more firmly, his hands tightening on the steering wheel, his anger infusing every sudden swerve and acceleration. If I so much assuggest he slow down, I know he’ll only push it further, veering dangerously just to prove he’s in control.
Like he’s entitled to do that, even when it makes others feel unsafe.
Especially when it makesmefeel unsafe.
More and more, it feels like he’s not in control of just the car.
He’s in control of me, how safe I feel. Whether I make it to our next destination.
And somehow, I’m the only one terrified of where this could all lead.
110
ON NIGHTMARES AND DAY DREAMS
I’m starting to be so closely attuned to his moods, moreso than I am to my own.
If he’s having a good day, we’ll both have a good day. If he’s having a bad day, we’ll both have a terrible time. And it can change with the wind.
He’s found a new way to torture me.
His foot is getting wigglier and wigglier.
Whenever he’s anxious about something he says I did, he will shake his foot more aggressively until the entire bed is rattling so hard I think it would probably show up as a reading on the Richter scale.
“It’s anxiety,” he says when I mention it. “I can’t help it. Stop making me feel bad for something that’s part of my mental illness, something I’m unable to control. That’s just mean. You, of all people, should know better. Imagine if I said that to you. You would go crazy.”
I feel sympathetic—after all, I suffer from anxiety too—but there’s a point at which Timmy’s behavior gets a bit much, that it feels like it’s more of an intentional act than a real symptom of an underlying anxiety issue.“Well can you please try not to shake it so hard,baby?” I keep my voice soft and low, careful as possible not to set him off. “Let me know how I can help you. But shaking the bed is pulling me out of what I’m doing.”
“Fuck you, Margaux. Talking to me like that.”
The foot shaking intensifies.
I’ve never experienced someone else’s mental health issues be so destructive to my day-to-day life.
He seems angry when I ask him to work.
He seems angry when I work.
He promises repeatedly to help me with my work, but rarely seems to follow through.
I look up the mood disorder he says he has, and I don’t see any symptoms of that. No visual or auditory hallucinations. If anything, he’s more controlling, more rageful, more vindictive.
I try to understand it, so much so that I join a group online for sufferers and allies of people who have his supposed mood disorder. It’s a highly active group, and I seek to understand where he’s coming from. But these aren’t the same symptoms he’s describing at all.
Sure, he has periods where he seems more excitable—possibly manic—and others where he seems more down. The people in this group, however, primarily describe voices in their head.
He says he has none of the typical symptoms, just seems to use ‘I have a mood disorder’ as a blanket excuse to behave however he wants, and to never take any constructive feedback, no matter how carefully I time it, how precisely I word it, how much I emphasize that we’re in this together and I’m not judging him, just trying to help make us a stronger couple.
I’m not a psychiatrist though, so what do I know?
And the foot situation just gets worse. To the point that every time he gets even slightly upset, he shakes his foot more.